Many varieties of optical instruments exist that provide for passing light or other optically behaved electromagnetic radiation through some material of interest, the material being either in a gaseous, liquid or solid form. An output beam emerging from the material contains information as to its characteristics. Information derived from the output beam is used as part of various analytical procedures. Examples of such instruments include the spectrophotometer, interferometer and spectrometer.
Most of these types of instruments are useful only for a gaseous, liquid or solid material of a single physically contained size. It is a primary object of the present invention to provide an optical instrument of the class described above that is capable of precise analysis of fluids contained within fluid cells of various sizes and shapes, as well as analysis of solids of various shapes.